Beneath the Sugar Sky (Wayward Children #3)

They were all searched thoroughly before they were tied up, and anything that might be viewed as dangerous was quickly confiscated, including Rini’s bracelet and Christopher’s bone flute. Cora tried not to think too hard about what the loss of the bracelet could mean for the rest of them. Surely the wizard who had given it to Rini would be able to make another one, something that would let them all go back to Miss West’s when this was over. Surely they weren’t about to be trapped behind someone else’s door, in a world that was even less right for them than the one where they’d been born. She still couldn’t think of the school as “home” any more than she could consider going back to the house where her family waited for the day when she’d be cured of all the things that made her who she was, but …

But she couldn’t stay here. This wasn’t a fantasy adventure. This was a nightmare of a candy-coated wonderland, the place the kids she’d gone to school with would have expected her to dream of finding beyond an impossible door, and she wanted nothing to do with it. Nothing at all.

The riders rode, and the captives dangled, and everything began to blur together, like the landscape was accelerating around them. That was the logical nonsense of Confection coming into play, where everything was no more than a day’s journey from everything else, no matter how fast you traveled or how big the world became.

(It felt a little bit like cheating—but then, to someone like Rini, airplanes and sports cars probably felt like cheating too, like a way to have all the distance in the world and not be forced to account for any of it. Cheating was always a matter of perspective, and of who was giving out the grades.)

Kade gasped. Cora twisted against her bonds as much as she could, craning her neck until she could see what he saw. Then she gasped as well, eyes going wide while she tried to take it all in.

In some ways, the castle that had appeared in front of them was nothing more nor less than a gingerbread house taken to a dramatic new extreme. It was the sort of thing children were coaxed to build at the holidays under the watchful eyes of their parents, getting flour and frosting absolutely everywhere. But true as that idea was, it didn’t do justice to the towering edifice of cake and cereal brick and sugar. This was no kitchen-craft, meant to be devoured with sticky fingers after Christmas din ner. This was a monument, a landmark, an architectural marvel baked with the sole intent of standing for a thousand years.

The walls were gingerbread so dark with spice that it verged on black, hardened with molasses and strengthened with posts of twisted pretzel treats. The sugar crystals studding the walls were larger than Kade’s fist, and sharpened to wicked points, until the entire structure became a weapon. The battlements looked like they had been carved from rock candy, and the towers were impossibly high, ignoring the laws of physics and common sense alike.

Rini moaned. “The castle of the Queen of Cakes,” she said. “We’re doomed.”

“I thought your mother defeated her,” hissed Cora.

“She did and she didn’t,” said Rini. “Once Mom died before coming back to Confection, everything started to come undone. The Queen of Cakes returned the same time the first of my fingers disappeared. She came back all at once, maybe because Mom killed her all at once, and she made me one ingredient at a time. I took nine months to bake. I might take nine months to disappear, one piece at a time, until all that’s left is my heart, lying on the ground, beating without a body.”

“Hearts don’t work that way,” said Christopher.

“Skeletons don’t walk around,” said Rini.

“All of you, silence,” snapped one of the knights. “Show some respect. You’re about to go before the rightful ruler of all Confection.”

“There is no rightful ruler of all Confection,” said Rini. “Cake and candy and fudge and gingerbread don’t all follow the same rules, so how can anyone make rules that work for everyone at the same time? You follow a false queen. The First Baker would be ashamed of you. The First Oven would refuse to bake your heart. You—”

His fist caught her full in the face, snapping her head back, leaving her gasping for breath. He turned to glare at the rest of his captives, eyes resting on each of them in turn.

“Show respect, or pay the price: the choice is yours,” he said, and the horses trotted on, carrying them ever closer to the castle, and to the impossible woman waiting there.

*

THE MAIN HALLWAY of the castle continued and fulfilled the promise of its exterior: everything was candy, or cake, or some other form of baked good, but elevated to a grace and glory that would have made the bakers back home weep at the futile nature of their own efforts. Chandeliers of sugar crystals hung from the vaulted, painted chocolate ceiling. Stained sugar glass windows filtered and shattered the light, turning everything into an explosion of rainbows.

Cora could close her eyes and imagine this whole place in plastic, mass-produced for the amusement of children. That made it a little better. If she just pretended none of this was happening, that she was safe back in her bed at the school—or better, that she was sleeping in her net of kelp in the Trenches, the currents rocking her gently through her slumber—then maybe she could survive it with her sanity intact.

The jagged sugar point of the spear at her back made it a little difficult to check out completely.

Rini was limping. From the way she wobbled, it looked like her toes were starting to follow her fingers into nothingness, leaving her off-balance and unstable. Kade and Christopher were walking normally, although Christopher looked pale and a little lost. His fingers kept flexing, trying to trace chords on a flute that wasn’t there anymore.

Only Sumi seemed unbothered by the change in their situation. She plodded placidly onward, her skeletal feet clacking softly against the polished candy floor, the thin screen of her shade continuing to look around her with polite disinterest, like this was by no means a remarkable situation.

“What are they going to do to us, Rini?” asked Kade in a low voice.

“Mom said the first time she faced the Queen of Cakes, the Queen forced her to eat a whole plate of broccoli,” said Rini.

Kade relaxed a little. “Oh, that’s not so bad—”

“And then she tried to cut Mom open so she could read the future in her entrails. You can’t read the future in candy entrails. They’re too sticky.” Rini said this in a matter-of-fact tone, like she was embarrassed to need to remind them of such a basic fact of life.

Kade paled. “See, that’s bad. That’s very bad.”

“Silence,” snapped one of the knights. They were approaching a pair of massive gingerbread doors, decorated with sheets of sugar glass in a dozen different colors. Cora frowned. They were colorful, yes, and they were beautiful, covered in tiny sugar crystals that glittered like stars in the light, but they didn’t go together. None of this did. That was why she kept thinking of children playing in the kitchen: there seemed to be no sense of unity or theme in the castle. It was big. It was dramatic. It wasn’t coherent.

This is a Nonsense world, she thought. Coherence probably wasn’t a priority.

A small hatch popped open next to the door, and a pretty dancing doll sculpted from peppermint spires and taffy popped out, holding a scroll in its sticky hands.